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Tuesday, 20 December 2016

Meanwhile in the South China Sea...

Let’s move away from the quacking of the parliamentary
duck pond for a moment to a different pond and a different quacking.

Imagine a line,
moving from left to right and rising at a 45 degree angle. Now picture a second
line starting below the first, also going from left to right but rising at a
sharper angle. Then picture the point where the two lines
intersect and draw a circle around it.

Finally label the
first line as the US and the second line as China.

Now hold that
thought as I whisk you away from your normal everyday setting to the tropical
waters of the South China Sea.

If you have been
paying any attention to international affairs (at least as it is described in
the usual unfocused manner by the mainstream media) you may have noticed a
series of articles over the last few years about the increasingly tense situation
over various reefs in the South China Sea.

At first glance it
seems like a simple case of good guys vrs the bad guys with the good guys being
the US (supported by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and
Singapore) and with China being the bad guy.

In reality things
are a bit more complicated and contain historical elements, international
tensions, world trade, national ambitions and a solid dose of good old jingoism.

The best summaries
of the situation can be found here and here provide a good picture of
what’s going on up until now.

But recently things
have taken a step up with China stealing a US naval underwater drone right from
in front of the US navy and China's angry reaction to president elect
Trump (illiterately) suggesting that the US might rethink the One China policy as well the
related issue of him taking a congratulatory call from the president of Taiwan which angered China no end.

So that's how it is with the "evil" Chinese doing no good and showing no
sign of reducing their hard-line stance on claiming all of the area like they already own it.

On the flip side the US is just trying to ensure "freedom of navigation" in the area and has no ulterior motive for being there in the first place. Just like the good global citizen that it is. That's all it is.

Oh wait, no, both of those last two sentences are complete BS and actually there is a lot more going on.

To add to China's bad behavior you have the US with its pivot towards Asia and its China containment strategy both
of which do little to ease the tensions and which are clear signals that the US
perceives China as a threat more than a trade partner or anything else.

Instead what is happening
is a slow but gradual ramping up of tension in the region with both the major
players making statements and posturing while the supporting actors taking steps to protect
their interests or change sides (in the case of the Philippines sudden pivot
towards China with the recent election tough guy president Duterte).

Add to this the fact
that the recent stink about China dumping steel in NZ and the angry reaction from
China immediately after might have you wonder about how secure NZ's trading relationship with China is, free trade agreement or not.

Or more close to the point how about China's comments to NZ about this very issue where it basically told NZ to back off and shut up.

Add into this the precarious state of world shipping and what a restriction or closing off of this main
artery of commerce would do not just to NZ trade but also the worlds (and if
you have ever seen the Ghost Fleet of Singapore (like I did) and you will have an idea
of exactly how difficult things could get.

Also NZ recently experienced a visit by a US naval ship*, ostensibly for the anniversary
celebrations of what’s left of New Zealand’s navy but which in reality was a
way of showing which side of the line NZ will stand (just like the 5 Eyes) on
militarily matters (the questions about what our Navy should actually be doing
instead of what it currently does can be asked for another time) should things
ever get that serious

Now this does not
mean that outright conflict is a certainty but the potential for a
miscalculation and things to get even tenser (and possibly shootier) is a distinct possibility.

Tempering that
though is the fact that such type of conflicts at sea are not as common as
those on land and the only two related examples from modern military history (after
World War Two) which spring to my mind are the Falklands War and the Cod War
but in both of those cases it was not two superpowers facing off over a powder
keg of geopolitical issues.

And this is where
we get back to our mental picture of lines from the start of this post. That circle around the
point where the two trajectories cross is the space or period of time where the
potential for conflict or war is high as the power of the faster rising nation match
and then eclipse the slower and guess where we are right now?

Of course I will be
the first to admit that such a diagram and hypothesis is very first year Pol
Sci with its rather loose take on International Relations.

But it’s not that
China nor the US have not fought a wars before (Korea was outright while
Vietnam was a proxy), or China has not had lots of border skirmishes of a similar kind with Vietnam (its
blunder into Vietnam in 1979 ostensibly proved their point and checked
potential Vietnamese expansion in the wake of their victory in the Vietnam War
but in reality they bit off more than they could chew and were driven back with
heavy losses) or India and Russia.

The point being
that in proximity to its borders and the defense thereof the Chinese are not
afraid to take things to a military level and start shooting and while a full
scale war is unlikely a short sharp burst of fire might be just the thing to
enforce the issue and see the US off.

For us living in NZ
all of this may still seem remote but the potential for conflict is not.

The US
under Trump may feel assertive enough to make a point of this (although Trump
appears to have already backed off his One-China comments now) and there are
other actors in this (like Vietnam and Japan) who don’t have the luxury of
watching at a distance as China gains control of vital territory, resources or trade
routes who might just decide that they can’t sit back on the issue and end up
dragging the US in when they decide to take action.

And while we live in an age where such things are rare and many people have used the argument that given all the trade China does with the world it would be foolish to think that they would risk all that just over some reefs please keep in mind that the 100 years of peace that Britain had between 1815 and 1914 were prefaced on similar arguments which did not stop the rest of the planet from having wars, or Britain embarking on its own colonial wars or its own step into the abyss in 1914.

And while Aleppo may be getting more attention at the moment this has all the potential to effect us quicker and more directly than the grim end to that siege and its human crisis.

So while we may
return to vicarious speculating about the 2017 elections in NZ pay at least some mind to
what’s going on over the horizon because while it may not register much in the local media or scratch your particular political itch does not mean it is not an important or vital issue or that it wont have an effect on you***** if things get heavy.

*-China was invited
to send a ship and looks like it sent one but they also sent one of these as well. Also when you compare the publicity one got compared to the other imagine
which side NZ would be on if forced to choose.

**- both do not
exactly fit the situation but there is enough of a parallel to make comparison

****-Which is why
China is now building a massive part in Burma to connect it to the Indian Ocean
without having to pass through the South China Sea or the bottleneck of the straights
of Malaca (Singapore and Malaysia)

*****- I hope I have illustrated through all the links I have used to show that it is on many peoples radars in many different ways.

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Itsa me!

Political pyromaniac; born again democrat; satirical connotator; fascist anarchist; relaxed conservative; focused liberal; consumer of truth, witch-hunter general of lies and putter of the praxis into perfect!